Bold Christian Witness Of Dr. John MacArthur And Beyond

On July 14, one of the boldest and most dedicated Christian pastors in modern history, Dr. John MacArthur, was promoted to Heaven.

Dr. MacArthur led Grace Community Church in Los Angeles for over a half century, wrote over 150 Christian books, and even founded a Christian university. Throughout his long ministry, Dr. MacArthur was known for uncompromising fidelity to Scripture.

Years ago, I remember watching Dr. MacArthur on Larry King, sitting next to non-Christian faith leaders, speaking boldly and proclaiming the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior for forgiveness of sins. Within the past decade, Dr. MacArthur was lambasted by many on the left over his Biblical stance of only men leading churches.

During COVID, Dr. MacArthur did not close his church and successfully sued California over the Church shutdowns. This set the legal precedence to help end Church closings throughout the nation. In addition to fighting COVID lockdowns against churches, MacArthur also boldly preached against Critical Race Theory and DEI as being against Christianity and authoritarianism. This was during the dark days of civil unrest and mayhem of 2020, and predictably he paid for it from the left.

By 2024, the tide of the nation turned to agreement that CRT and DEI are generally malign influences. Dr. MacArthur’s bold Christian witness helped defeat internal authoritarianism, as bold Christian witness has accomplished again tougher authoritarianism.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attempted to crush Christianity due to its challenge to authoritarianism from the beginning, and ramping up recently. From Author and Journalist Jon Brown’s article ‘China Ramping up Persecution of Christians as it Demands Worship and Allegiance of Xi Jinping’. (Fox News, Feb. 24, 2023):

“The Chinese Communist Party escalated its persecution of Christians throughout 2022 as the country clamped down on churches and online religious content while demanding allegiance to Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a watchdog group…. while the Chinese government has long demanded sole allegiance to the Communist Party, in recent years it has been emphasizing allegiance to Jinping.

“Before, during, and after the opening of the Congress, China's state-run religious groups lavished compliments and praise on Xi with more extravagant words and phrases than China's state-run media, showing that religious Sinicization is evolving from supporting the CCP to worship and allegiance to Xi Jinping … Their goal is not only to curate a ‘socialist-friendly’ church; they hope to erase it….. The international community needs to know about these trends and developments as China continues to rise on the global stage."

The CCP, like every Marxist organization, has always viewed Christianity as a dangerous threat to its power. As Christianity Today Editor Kate Shellnutt wrote: “Thousands of Christian villagers in China have been told to take down displays of Jesus, crosses, and gospel passages from their homes as part of a government propaganda effort to “transform believers in religion into believers in the party.” (Christianity Today, Nov. 17, 2017)

Several Christian watchdog groups reported the rising persecution of Christians during the COVID lockdowns as CCP censored internal stories. The CCP justified the crackdowns with propagandizing slurs against Christianity, including bogus allegations of “infiltration” (by counterrevolutionaries). (Reuters, March 12, 2019)

The CCP spent years studying the power and influence of Christianity and has concluded it is the greatest challenge to the authoritarian rule of the Communist Party. This comes primarily because of the power of bold Christian witness in bringing down the communism of the Soviet Union. Author and Army War College Professor Azeem Ibrahim noted the Communist Party was most “scared of the Christian religion” as its top ideological threat and greatest source of resistance to authoritarian rule. As Azeem put it: “(Christianity) is inherently threatening to the CCP. Chinese leadership also studied the fall of the Soviet bloc intensely and are well aware of the role both Catholic and Protestant (bold) faith contributed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. (Foreign Policy, July 1, 2021)

In 2018, the New York Times Published an article entitled “The Writer Who Brought Down an Empire”. The article was about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, famous Russian dissident and author who had converted to Christianity while in the Soviet Gulag system. After conversion, Solzhenitsyn boldly wrote a number of books exposing the authoritarian hell within the Soviet Union. After release from the Gulags, Solzhenitsyn wrote prolifically while being persecuted by the Soviets for his Christian based writings. He was eventually stripped of his citizenship and forced into exile, where he kept writing about the horrors of the atheist authoritarian Soviet Union. His constant refrain of the reason for the Bolshevik Revolution, taken from the sayings of the elders he knew as a boy in Russia about the revolution: “They have forgotten God, and that’s why all this has happened”. (NY Times, Dec. 11, 2018)

Many see the bold Christian witness of writers like Solzhenitsyn and leadership of bold Christian dissidents in Poland and East Germany as the key reason the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

We should thank God for sending us Dr. John MacArthur, who encouraged many Christians, including me, to stand firm with Scriptural truth over pervading relativism and progressive authoritarianism of recent years. On Christ the solid rock we have stood as a nation and will continue to stand as we remain bold witnesses.